Tim McCoy was born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1891. He came to Wyoming in 1909 to be a cowboy and eventually homesteaded in the Big Horn Basin. He enlisted for service during World War I, went to Artillery Officers’ School, and ultimately achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The war ended before he was sent overseas. After the war, Wyoming Governor Robert Carey appointed McCoy to the position of Adjutant General for the State of Wyoming.

In his autobiography, Tim McCoy Remembers the West, McCoy reported that in 1922 an agent for a movie producer visited McCoy in his Capitol Building office to solicit McCoy’s assistance. McCoy was recruited to hire 500 Native Americans for the film The Covered Wagon and bring them to Hollywood. He was also asked to serve as technical advisor for the film. Thus began an entertainment career which would include over 90 movies, a television series, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and Tim McCoy’s Wild West and Rough Riders of the World. McCoy also maintained a large working ranch in Wyoming’s Owl Creek region until the mid-1940s. He continued to make public appearances well into his senior years. He died in 1978 at the age of 87.